Hangzhou!

Iona

This was our first weekend in Hangzhou and the sisterhood (minus Liz since she was taking a sick day) met at the South Gate of Hanggao to hang out with Mr. William for the day! We finally learned that there was a difference when using Hanggao vs Hangzhou, Hanggao refers to the school and Hangzhou refers to the city; Hanggao is short for Hangzhou Gaozhong (Hangzhou High School)- so in English it’s a nickname for Hangzhou High School. The more you know!

Mr. William teaches English at the international high school, but was happy to show us around and took the three of us to Liying temple first thing in the morning. Liying temple was an amazing site with loads of running water and pretty stones and greenery everywhere, and people! So many people were coming to the top of the Liying garden to burn incense and to pray to the numerous statues. Everything was done in sets of three, and so we took three sticks of incense and bowed three times in the direction of whichever statue we chose to pray to.

After the the temple, we went out to lunch where we ate some bamboo shoots as they are in season! Young baby shoots are the tastiest in the spring season and they were so delicious to eat for lunch :). After lunch, we drove to the Xixi Wetlands which was a village type situation on a raised platform above the wetlands for lack of a better word. It was really fun to walk the streets of the town and see all the different stores that were selling handicrafts and snacks of all kinds- I bought a jar of honey dipped pretzels which were so tasty. The greenery around us was so refreshing after having been in the city of Hangzhou for the last few days. We spent some of the afternoon there but left early enough to avoid rush hour on the way back.

We said goodbye to William and for dinner, the Sisterhood had been invited out to eat by all of our host families. Kelbs and I met up with Liz (who was feeling better), Caroline and her parents, Henry and his parents, Peter and my host parents, and Mrs. Waterman at the same restaurant to have dinner. It was great to all sit as a group and all the families are very friendly towards each other so overall it was a great evening. We parted ways after we were all done eating but knew we’d being seeing each other again very shortly; until then!